jsmenu-codedev — Discussions regarding jsmenu code & development of it

[jsmenu-codedev] Changelog 2001-12-09

[Morten W. <war...@on...>]

two new features added.  also, I forgot to add the fact that
MTMenuFrame had changed from a string to a pointer to the frame object
in the new code.  it's automagically set to point to the right frame
in MTMGetFrames().  here's today's changelog:

2001-12-09:
 - added option MTMTrackedCookieName, used for storage of the tracked item
   in a cookie.  MTMFetchCookie() is renamed to be plural, therefore it's now
   MTMFetchCookies().  the cookie is read on startup and if found
   MTMTrackedItem is set to the number in the cookie and the URL found
   is loaded into the found target frame.
   
   code run at startup is now quite patchy and should go through some redesign.
   the need for a URL resolver increases and a feature request has been opened.

 - added option MTMDefaultTarget (string) that lets you set a default target
   for new items.  if it's not set the menu defaults back to the old usage of
   the empty string.
 - tested insertion of new mtmcode.js with new variables into old setup and
   noticed that it worked without errors.  therefore it seems the addition
   of variables to mtmcode.js was successfull, making updates easier.


Morten!

-- 
"...a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."
  My opinions are not necessarily those of my provider,
  not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary.

[jsmenu-codedev] Changelog 2001-12-05

[Morten W. <war...@on...>]

fixed a small bug, added some features that have been requested.
started planning the "store tracked item in a cookie" feature, but
didn't get around to implement it.  logged entries:

2001-12-05:
 - fixed a bug in scrollbar colouring, one of the properties never got
   written to the document, and was therefore unsupported.
 - added configurable doctype for the menu document through MTMDOCTYPE
 - added configurable content-type for the menu document through
   MTMcontentType
 - added right-click prevention script through MTMrightClickMessage.
   currently unsupported in Mozilla/Netscape 6, one script I saw
   didn't work.  will look for one that works and test it.
 - updated CREDITS to show credits for versions, as well as updated it
   with credits for some new features of 2.3.1

the changes are checked in to CVS, of course.


Morten!

-- 
"...a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."
  My opinions are not necessarily those of my provider,
  not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary.

[jsmenu-codedev] Changelog 2001-12-02

[Morten W. <war...@on...>]

squashed two bugs, and did a slight usefulness update:

2001-12-02:
 - moved tracking code over to its own file, mtmtrack.js
 - changed MTMCheckURL() so it uses a for() loop and an array
   (excludeArray) thereby removing the ever-increasing if() statement.
   in the process I added a check for "file:" (so that protocol is
   also supported) and "/" so that URLs relative to the root directory
   are regarded as absolute.  bugs #429698 and 423712 are therefore
   marked "closed - fixed".


Morten!

-- 
"...a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."
  My opinions are not necessarily those of my provider,
  not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary.

[jsmenu-codedev] Fixing the IE6 bug: 'replace' not supported

[Morten W. <war...@on...>]

as I just mentioned on the yahoogroups mailing list the menu has a
back-button bug in IE6.  from what I've been able to test IE6 doesn't
support the 'replace' argument to document.open(), which the menu uses
to make sure the rewriting of the menu frame doesn't add to the
history list.  the call to document.open() is done in line 205 in the
CVS version:

    MTMDoc.open("text/html", "replace");

I'm not exactly sure how to go about fixing it, but I'm thinking along
the lines of using the IE method insertAdjacentHTML().  the thing is,
that when I first do things I prefer to do them well, so I am
considering wanting to rewrite the frame usage so that the menu uses
inserAdjacentHTML() to manipulate the document in IE6, and the W3C DOM
methods in Netscape 6/Mozilla.  I'm thinking along these lines:

1: have only one frame, it name is not important (but keeping it named
   'code' is probably a good idea), containing code.html
2: in code.html load code that identifies the browser, just like it
   does now
3: if IE4+ or NN6, wait to the document is loaded, then use the
   appropriate dHTML methods to populate the document according to the
   user setup, showing the menu
4: if NN3, NN4 or Opera5/6, output a frameset code containing two
   frames, one for the code, one for the menu, with appropriate unique
   names.  rename the parent frame to 'code' so the tracking code
   works, and make sure there's an object there pointing to
   MTMDisplayMenu()

if this is done, then it should be possible to have the menu running
without frames quite easily since the menu no longer needs the parent
frameset to function (if we keep the HTML target-attribute usage).
having an element in the document with an id of "mtmenu" that'll be
populated by the code should be all.  problem then is how to
expand/collapse submenus, but that's a later issue.

comments, anyone?


Morten!

-- 
"...a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."
  My opinions are not necessarily those of my provider,
  not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary.

[jsmenu-codedev] Changelog 2001-11-25

[Morten W. <war...@on...>]

just a small update.  after getting many requests about scroll bar
colours I've added support for that.  here's the changelog:

2001-11-25:
 - added scrollbar colour properties to code.html as well as support
   for this in mtmcode.js
 - changed the start-tag of the linked script element so it uses the
   IE-proprietary "defer" attribute.  IE6 behaves unstable when
   linking a .js-file, and I believe telling it to not parse the
   linked script at runtime should help.  More testing is needed.


Morten!

-- 
"...a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."
  My opinions are not necessarily those of my provider,
  not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary.

[jsmenu-codedev] Changelog 2001-11-23

[Morten W. <war...@on...>]

it's high time this mailing list started getting some traffic (not to
mention me re-reading "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" so I might start
doing things right, but I digress...)

anyway, started working on the code, here's what was done:

2001-11-23:
 - altered comment in mtmcode.js saying user-configurable options are
   in code.html 
 - added section for default values of all user-configurable options
 - added variable MTMLinkedJSURL which can be used to link in a .js-file
   with own functions and variables to the menu document.  tested in IE6,
   NN4.78 (Linux) and Mozilla 0.9.6 (Linux).  needs more testing, and
   more documentation about method call quirks in browsers
   (onclick-events seem necessary at the moment)

changes are checked into CVS.

if anyone has any thoughts, ideas, comments or anything, feel free to
start posting.  I've got a bug list that's way too large, a bunch of
ideas I never get 'round to implementing not to mention several
user-submitted ideas & patches that should've made their way into the
code many months ago... and if you want to tell me that I suck at
project management that's ok too :)


cheers,
Morten!

-- 
"...a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."
  My opinions are not necessarily those of my provider,
  not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary.